The Buf 
Schema Registry

Generated SDKs,  API documentation, Protobuf plugin management, and governance

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Consume and publish APIs without friction

The Buf Schema Registry (BSR) is the source of truth for tracking and evolving your Protobuf APIs. It enables you to maintain compatibility and manage dependencies while enabling your clients to consume APIs reliably and efficiently.

Manage

Automatically generate SDKs for API consumers.

Document

Generate API documentation for every schema.

Safeguard

Changes to your API won't break downstream consumers.

Integrate

Verifies and maintains the most commonly used plugins.

Professional Protobuf Management

Package manager for Protobuf
Dependency management for .proto files that works like any other language: declare dependencies and just buf dep update. No more git submodules, custom shell scripts, or hoping everyone has the right versions.
Build-time governance
Breaking schema changes are stopped in CI/CD and pull requests, not when they break downstream systems. The BSR is your Protobuf expert automatically checking every commit for every subtle change, from wire format to JSON field naming.
Generated SDKs
npm install, go get, or cargo add and you’re done. No protoc setup, no plugin configuration, no “works on my machine” problems.
Documentation without burden
The BSR turns well-commented .proto files into organized, indexed, searchable docs automatically, for every version of your schemas. No new tools, no scripts to run, and no docs that fall behind your code.
Built-in service discovery
See which teams and services depend on each module before you change it, so breaking changes never come as a surprise. The BSR maps the graph automatically. No wiki pages, no Slack archaeology.
One schema language
The BSR is your single source of truth for Protobuf. Push your .proto files to Buf, and use them everywhere.

The source of truth for tracking and evolving Protobuf APIs

Generated SDKs

Automatically generate SDKs for API consumers that integrate with widely used package managers, eliminating the need to manually generate code for each language in your organization's stack.

Browse integrations
// A notification sent to a user.
message Notification {
   // Unique identifier for this notification.
   string id = 1;
   // ID of the user who will receive this notification.
   string recipient_id = 2;
   // The notification message text.    
   tring content = 3;
}

API documentation

Generate API documentation for every schema stored in the BSR. The BSR docs engine accepts markdown and machine-readable formats and surfaces docs for modules and top-level packages. Docs automatically include custom options and code examples to help your team discover, learn about, and explore your API surface area.

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Policy checks

Enable server-side policy checks to ensure that changes to your API don't break downstream consumers. Policy checks require dedicated approvers to review changes, ensuring that the right team members are aware of changes and that your API evolves safely over time.

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Diagram showing multiple API changes passing through approval checkpoints before reaching a central system, representing server-side policy checks.
version: v2
plugins:
  # Generate message and enum types for Go.
  - remote: buf.build/protocolbuffers/go
    out: gen
    opt: paths=source_relative
  # Generate Go client and server stubs for
  # Connect.
  - remote: buf.build/connectrpc/gosimple
    out: gen
    opt: paths=source_relative

Remote plugins

Buf verifies and maintains the most commonly used plugins across the Protobuf ecosystem and hosts them publicly on the BSR, eliminating the need to understand the complex mechanics of protoc or maintain, download, or run plugins on your local machine.

Browse plugins

The missing package manager for Protobuf

Build guarantees
Single source of truth
CI/CD Integration

Build guarantees

Since the BSR is a Protobuf-aware registry, it prevents Protobuf files that don't compile from being pushed to the origin in the first place. Your consumers can have confidence that Protobuf files consumed from the BSR aren't broken and can compile. Everyone in the ecosystem benefits because compilation guarantees are pushed from the individual to the BSR.

Diagram showing multiple Protobuf changes flowing toward a central registry, with invalid changes flagged and blocked before reaching the system.

Single source of truth

The BSR offers a centralized registry to store all your Protobuf files, simplifying the process of publishing and consuming. By making the BSR the single source of truth, it's possible to power developer workflows and business processes around Protobuf without worrying how to keep everything in sync.

“Diagram showing a central registry receiving a Protobuf file and distributing it to multiple consumers, representing a single source of truth.

CI/CD Integrations

The Buf GitHub Action makes it easy to run the Buf CLI within a workflow to check for build, lint, format, and breaking change errors, and automatically publish schema changes to the BSR. If you're not using GitHub, the Buf CLI is easy to integrate into other CI/CD systems.

GitHub Actions workflow showing a Protobuf change failing checks due to naming and breaking change errors detected by Buf.

Build guarantees

Since the BSR is a Protobuf-aware registry, it prevents Protobuf files that don't compile from being pushed to the origin in the first place. Your consumers can have confidence that Protobuf files consumed from the BSR aren't broken and can compile. Everyone in the ecosystem benefits because compilation guarantees are pushed from the individual to the BSR.

Smiling man wearing glasses and a checkered shirt sitting at a desk with a keyboard and computer screen showing code.

Get started with the Buf Schema Registry

Define your schema once. Generate SDKs, docs, and dependencies automatically.

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